34* DISCOVERIES OF THE ANCIENTS, 
heart of this immense desert, a spot covered with 
luxuriant verdure, flowing rivulets, and all the 
beauties of perpetual spring. The king then sought 
the most aged of the interpreters of the oracle, 
and inquired his own origin and destiny. The 
spears of the invincible phalanx, drawn up in bat- 
tle array, threw a wonderful light on the eyes of 
the prophet. He at once saw and owned Alex- 
ander as the son of Jupiter, and worthy of divine 
honours ; a declaration with which the monarch 
departed better satisfied than some of his follow- 
ers. 
Under the liberal and enlightened administra- 
tion of the Ptolemies, it cannot be doubted, that 
o;reat efforts would be made to extend the know- 
ledge of interior Africa. The same may pro- 
bably be said of the Romans, whose writers evi- 
dently show that their countrymen felt on this 
subject the same mixture of wonder and curiosity, 
which animated the natives of Egypt and Greece. 
The fruit of this spirit of inquiry appears in the 
extended knowledge of the geographical writers of 
the first and second centuries. Of the steps, how- 
ever, by which this knowledge was procured, no re- 
cord is to be found, with the exception of a short 
and incidental notice by Ptolemy, * of two Roman 
expeditions. The one was made by Septimius 
* B. I. ch, S. 
